New prospects for mobile devices with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845

American manufacturer Qualcomm has unveiled its new processor, the Snapdragon 845, which is likely to equip a host of high-end smartphones in 2018. More than ever, this mobile processor is geared up for the demands of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Qualcomm presented its latest star processor in Hawaii, promising a performance upgrade of at least 20% compared to the current Snapdragon 835. It is expected to land from Q1, 2018, in upcoming flagship handsets from the likes of Samsung (Galaxy S9) and LG (G7), as well as in the next generations of “all-in-one” virtual reality headsets and in certain Windows 10 laptop PCs developed in partnership with Microsoft.

In May 2017, at the Computex trade fair in Taipei, Taiwan, Qualcomm announced its intention to compete with Intel by equipping certain PCs with its best chips, offering machines with less power but boosted battery lives and cheaper pricing.

Qualcomm didn’t reveal all of its new processor’s technical secrets in Hawaii. Still, the Snapdragon 845 is specially designed to support the latest developments in the fields of virtual and augmented reality, although Qualcomm prefers to use the umbrella term “Extended Reality” (XR) to encapsulate Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR) and everything in between. For example, the processor promises three times faster performances for machine learning tasks, like voice recognition or automatic photo filters in relation to exposure conditions.

Note that the processor also features the Qualcomm Secure Processing Unit (SPU) to help protect biometric data relative to individual devices.